* draw a card from the deck* kill or be killed* and if you’re lucky, repeat…

Hidden agendas, deep, dark secrets, and monsters
lurking around every locker. It’s business as usual at Redgrave High for Eryn
and her crew of paranorm hunters – although the two guys vying for her heart
just might have to up their game.

A little healthy competition soon becomes
all-out survival of the fittest as the crew are pitted against a pack of demons
trading souls – for keeps. The student population is enamored with a new card
game, Boroughs Quest. Kids are desperate to get their hands on gilded cards
from a mysterious expansion deck, but when they do…

The silent night
is edged in glints of silver as moonlight filters down through dense ice fog.
Redgrave’s streets are lined with frosted trees that sparkle as if coated with
glitter. Front yards and porches are decorated with the trappings of the
season. All is still. Serene. Yet, on the barren road of one particular
neighborhood, a usually smug snowman melts under its borrowed top hat, alone
and vulnerable.

Kyle’s parents are
out for the evening, a staff party that will end with his mother bitching about
her boss and his father griping about his failed dream of being an all-star.
Then the standard shouting match, the stomping as his father paces the floor,
working up the guts to tell his wife he never loved her. That he only married
her because of the kid, the boy he could never understand. How had the once and
glorious head of the king of the jocks fathered such a hopeless nerd?

Grumbling at the predictability of their
lives, Kyle rifles through the gifts his mother has tucked away in the spare
room closet where they wait in the dark until she has time to do the wrapping.
You’d think she’d learn to change the hiding place.

But she never does.

His fingers sink
into itchy wool. He pulls the material into the light. Two reindeer beam up at
him, embroidered into the fibre. He shoves the offending sweater to the bottom
of the pile. Just the same crap. Clothes he hated, video games he already had,
books he’d never read, but, wait…what was this?

The small,
rectangular gold and black package almost leapt into his hand, a Borough’s Quest expansion pack. Kyle
gives a triumphant fist pump. Finally his lameass parents had gotten something
right. He exits the room with his prize held tight to his chest and retreats to
the semi-finished basement, his bedroom, his oasis, in the land of status quo
and keeping up with the Joneses.

Who cares if they
find out he got this prize early? He knew it would be worth any whining from
his mother and head shakes from his father. He bites off the top of the wrapper
and spits it out onto the concrete floor. The seven cards are free. He’s never
seen their equal. This expansion pack wasn’t registered. Where had his parents
found an illegal deck? Did his father have a bit of nerd in him after all?

Kyle chokes back a
nervous giggle. Then pauses.

Why is he nervous?
His heart races, his breath unsteady.

One card calls to
him the most. He reaches out. Hesitant. Then boldly snatches it up and stares
into the monster’s face. He could swear it stares right back at him.

The pain is
immediate. A burning from the inside out. He is being cooked in a microwave on
the highest setting, is roasting alive as if on an open fire – he’s stepped
into the fires of hell. The screams that rip from his throat don’t sound human.

Outside, the air
around the newly constructed house pulses with a brilliant tangerine glow.
Glass shatters. Flames spew from every window, the burning, forked tongues of
many beasts, desperate to devour all in their path. And in the next instant the
house is just like any other.

No pulsing lights.

No flames.

Not a scorch mark
on the siding.

A single black top
hat rests in the middle of a yard devoid of snow.

Residing in a northern Alberta community, similar to the
fictional town of Redgrave, where Under My Skin is set - Judith unhappily
endures snow in the winter, and runs away from bees in the summer.

A firm believer that Canadian teen fiction can
be sexy, action packed and snarky as hell - Judith writes paranormal stories
with attitude.

One Winner will get audio book editions of Under My Skin and Second Skin (first two books in the series) plus a $20.00 Amazon gift card.
Ships in US/Canada Only
Must be 13+ To Enter
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